The War of Vietnam lasted just a few months short of twenty years. Through its duration, thousands of American planes were downed over enemy territory. The fighter pilots who survived found themselves prisoners of war.

This is the story of ten such men, all of whom were held as captives in the Hanoi Hilton, a prison located in the heart of North Vietnam. Here they found themselves isolated from the outside world and, for more than two years, even from each other. However, in strict solitary confinement they discovered they were not alone.

Letting Go

Porter Halyburton looked at the still-intact radio. Compared to the rest of the plane it had weathered the crash remarkably well!This was his chance to get a message through – to let the rest of the world know he was still alive. His hand rose to tune it, but he quickly pulled it back again.

He’d been trained to destroy the radio, in order to keep it out of the hands of the Vietnamese. They’d use it to call other American planes into the range of their missiles. But as he pulled his knife from his belt, his instincts battled against his training. Ugh, what a choice! But he had to make it, by now the Vietnamese couldn’t be more than five hundred yards away. He was running out of time. 

The soldier pursed his lips, gripped his knife, and destroyed his radio. There! It was done. Now his fate was fully in God’s hands.

Sentenced to Die

His arm ached. The shoulder was out of its socket and the bone felt like it was broken as well. But his arm was nothing in comparison to the pain radiating through his back. Ejecting from a plane, moving at five hundred miles per hour, is hard on a man’s body! 

The little wooden stool on which he sat and the ropes with which his arms and legs were bound did little to ease his discomfort. Thus, even if he could have understood the words of the hastily-appointed judge and jury, Sam Johnson was in too much agony to listen to the proceedings of the shanty courtroom. At least until the interpreter leaned close to explain their verdict to him.

“You’ve been sentenced to die. You’re a war criminal.”

That he heard! The man smiled as he said it, he looked as though he enjoyed the whole affair immensely.

Johnson said nothing in return, he knew too well that he was powerless in their hands. His captors half drug, half pushed him out of the little house and down a trail which led through the woods. They allowed him no break till he stood at the edge of the trench meant to be his grave.

A firing squad was waiting. As the commander called for the weapons to be made ready, the American – who had never knelt in a church – cried out to God beneath the jungle canopy.

“You know I just need Your help!” He said aloud. Motivated to pray by sheer desperation, he saw no need to disguise it for he felt sure God knew it already. However, it was in perfect sincerity that he then, silently, turned his life over to Jesus Christ.

The command to fire was given in Vietnamese. Click, click, click, click, click – every one of the guns jammed. Not a single bullet left its barrel. 

Wow! There was no other word to describe it. Sam Johnson began to laugh – he couldn’t help himself. He laughed aloud at men who were pointing loaded guns at his chest!

For the first time since he was captured, Sam realized these men did not hold his life in their hands – that power belonged to one who was greater than them.

 “From that point forward, I never had any fear of them again, because I knew the Lord was with me.” – Sam Johnson

The Thing They Needed

“Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy xxxi. 6)

Most of the ten prisoners survived death sentences before being sent to the Hanoi Hilton. Several had stood at the edge of their graves. Norm McDaniel was hung till he lost consciousness. Then, for some unexplained reason, his executioners cut him down. In like manner, all the executions either failed or were strangely abandoned.

Even at the very start of their captivity, the prisoners began to see that, despite the power of their enemies, their lives were in the hands of God alone. Only a couple of the ten soldiers would have professed to be Christians at the time when their plane had crashed. But all of them arrived in Hanoi either as new believers or with a fresh commitment to live out the faith they claimed. In the jungles of Vietnam, they received the one thing they would need in order to endure the prison to which they were headed – God Himself!

Porter’s Cell Mate

Lying on the block of concrete he now called his bed, Porter starred up at the dim light bulb. There wasn’t much else to look at. There was a window on the far wall, but it was shuttered to keep even the light of day from reaching him. 

The boredom alone is enough to drive a man crazy! He had been there only two weeks, but already it felt like two months. At this rate, how long would he make it. It could be years before were freed – if we ever get freed.

 No! He couldn’t allow himself to think that way! The words of his guard were getting to his head.

“You’re an incorrigible reactionary and you’ll never see another American again!” That was the phrase the man repeated every time he came to the cell. Porter laughed. It was an impressive insult for someone who could barely speak the language, but he had to wonder if the man even knew what “incorrigible reactionary” meant.

His laughter changed to coughing as he breathed in the hot air. It must be more than a hundred degrees in this cell! It was actually a hundred and thirty. As filthy as the floor was, Porter wished he could lie flat on it, press his face up to the crack at the bottom of the door, and breath some ‘cool’ air. But metal stocks held his feet in place.

The second part of the statement returned to his mind, “You’ll never see another American again!” Those were the words he feared! At times he wondered if he had made the right decision when he destroyed the radio and with it, his only chance to call for help. 

God knows we’re here. Porter reminded himself. “God, how I wish you would show me you really do!”

 A few minutes passed, then he suddenly noticed that a ray of light was shining on the wall across from him. It wasn’t the orange glow of the artificial bulb – it was sunlight!Through an almost undetectable crack in the wooden shutters a small stream of light, of God’s light, entered the impenetrable cell. How did I miss that? He had been lying on his back for two weeks, looking at nothing but the roof and that wall. If the light had come through before, he felt sure he would have noticed it.

Porter shook his head and smiled. No matter where the Vietnamese put their prisoners, God could still reach them!

 That glimmer of light returned to the cell every day for about ten minutes. Every day, it freshly reminded the prisoner that his God was present with him. Days later, when Porter Halyburton was finally released from the stocks, he took an old scrap of paper and tore it into the shape of a cross. Then, with a piece of rice from his meagre ration, he stuck it to the wall, just where the sunlight touched. Now each day, when the light streamed in, it would meet the cross and remind him of the Light of the world who died on such an instrument in order to set him free! 

The crash, destroying his radio, the hot prison cell, the stocks, the little beam of light – they had all worked together “so that [he] should seek the Lord, in the hope that [he] might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;” (Acts xvii. 27) 

The Lord had been near all the time, waiting for Porter to look for Him so he might reveal Himself! 

Fellowship in Isolation

Porter was not the only prisoner to find God present in his isolation cell. Every one of the men shared their prison cell with rats, cockroaches and Jesus Christ!

“I had the wonderful, psychological feeling that I was really pulling one over on the Vietnamese. They thought I was in there really suffering by being alone and I had a cell mate the entire time I was there. That was the Lord Jesus Christ.” – Rodger Ingvalson

The prisoners gained strength and courage in fellowship with the Lord. In addition to this, God gave them the gift of fellowship with one another.

 It was against the rules to make contact with the other prisoners, but the men deemed it well worth the risk. The cells were situated in a long line and they began to realize that when any one of them tapped on the walls or the floor the sound carried through the whole length of the building. By this means they communicated; developing their own code for the alphabet and tapping messages, one letter at a time. It was a slow task, but time was something they had in abundance! They told stories and jokes, talked about their guards, and, they prayed.

Prayer Meeting at the Hanoi Hilton

“Every Sunday,” Sam Johnson recalled, “someone would stomp on the floor and we would all kneel down together, even though we were by ourselves, and we would pray. The strength of prayer together is much stronger than just by yourself and I know the Lord heard us.”

“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew xviii. 20)

The men prayed together and they prayed individually. Despite their desperate need, they did not reserve their prayers for themselves alone. Instead, they prayed for their families back home, the troops still employed in the fight, and for one another. Prayer is access into the very throne room of a generous and merciful God and they discovered He would supply them with all they needed. 

“Prayer was the principle weapon, not anything else, and the principle ammunition was what God gave you back. That was the ability to stay cheerful enough and persevering enough to do what you needed to do.” – Jeremiah Denton

When they weren’t praying, the prisoners kept their minds and bodies busy. They solved math problems, encouraged one another, remembered happier times, and, when not restrained in stocks, they walked three to five miles per day by pacing the length of their cells. As Denton said, God gave them cheerfulness and perseverance. He also gave them faith, faith in Him, that kept them from despair.

“Someone described faith as taking a rope, tying a knot into it, and hanging on for six years. That was a good description.” – Red McDaniel

“In all the seven and a half years I never lost faith in my Saviour – lost faith in others, not my fellow POW’s, but the people back home running things, yeah I lost faith in them but never in my Saviour and my fellow prisoners. They were there for me and God was there through them.” – Fred Cherry

New Trials

After the first two years, the solitary confinement was slowly relaxed. The prisoners were allowed cell mates. All except Sam Johnson, his isolation was prolonged for three months longer than the others. It might have gone on longer still, if Jeremiah Denton hadn’t called the prisoners to go on a hunger strike. The rations they were given barely sustained them as it was, yet the men willingly forfeited in hope of freeing Sam from his prolonged solitude.

It worked! The guards gave in and, within a few days, Sam Johnson was permitted to see two of the other prisoners. It was the first time he had seen a fellow American in two and a half years! 

But just when things appeared to be getting better, they met with a new form of hardship – physical torture. One of the guards said, “The Vietnamese have been refining the art of inflicting pain for four thousand years.” They didn’t doubt the truth of his words. But in this, as in isolation, God provided grace.

“And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians xii. 9 -10)

When a man came back from a torture session, his cell mate would pray for him and the others would join in their language of taps. In this way, they lived out 1 Corinthians xii. 26, “If one member suffers, all suffer together…” 

God gave them love for one another and demonstrated His love through theirs. Rodger Ingvalson recalled an occasion when he was brought into an interrogation room and told his wife had died. The prisoners never knew if they should believe the “news from home” and they were only ever given bad news. But Rodger’s his wife was previously in bad health, so this report deeply shook him.

Still he found God’s grace sufficient for the difficulty. He thanked his captors for the news. It wasn’t till he got back to his cell that he gave way to the grief he felt. Thankfully, God had a fresh measure of grace awaiting Rodger through the prayers and encouragement of his cell mate.

“Perhaps God brings us to the end of our resources so we can discover the vastness of His.” — Neil Anderson

Happy Ending: They Went Home and Took God With Them

On April 30, 1975 the USA came to a peace agreement with Vietnam. Three days later the prisoners were told they were free. Some had spent six years in prison, others up to nine, finally they were free! They would all be going home.

They returned to the United States, carrying the lessons they had learned through isolation, torture and God’s sufficient supply of grace. Through their suffering they had gained a knowledge of their Saviour, grown in faith, practiced in reaching Him through prayer, and were strengthened by a fellowship of believers with whom they would remain lifelong friends.

They counted prison, isolation, and torture worthwhile, “that [they might] know Him and the power of His resurrection, and [might] share His sufferings, being conformed to His death,” (Philippians iii. 10) 

May we desire to know the same, even if we must endure hardship to find it!

In Christ 

Quiana

*Scripture references in NKJV unless otherwise noted.